Press reporter Lily Robinson brought home a New England Newspaper and Press Association (NENPA) award at this year’s New England Better Newspaper Competition in the newly established category of racial and ethnic issues coverage.
Lily Robinson. (Courtesy photo)
The third-place award was for Robinson’s August 2020 news feature on the painting of a Black Lives Matter graphic on the Bromfield School rock, “The story behind the BLM image on the Bromfield rock is complicated.”
The Press tied for this honor with two other small-circulation weeklies: Nantucket’s Inquirer and Mirror, and Martha’s Vineyard’s Vineyard Gazette. First place went to the Old Colony Memorial (Plymouth), which is a Wicked Local paper owned by Gannett. The award was announced last week at this year’s virtual 2021 NENPA Convention.
This is the fourth NENPA award for the Harvard Press. In 2019 Marty Green and Joan Eliyesil won first place in government reporting for stories on the debate concerning whether to build a new elementary school. In 2009 Lisa Aciukewicz won a first-place award for her photo series on the December 2008 ice storm and a second-place award in the general news category for her photograph of students watching President Obama’s inauguration.
Robinson is a senior at University of Massachusetts Amherst majoring in journalism. She joined the Press last summer as an intern and has remained as a freelance reporter, contributing to the paper’s “Confronting Racism” series and helping cover other town news. Robinson was recently inducted into the UMass chapter of Kappa Tau Alpha, a college honor society for journalism and mass communication majors. The honor is extended each year to the top 10% of the graduating class.
